CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--Americans are justly puzzled at the behavior of Donald Trump and his crowds of followers. Episodes of people being expelled from Trump rallies just for looking or dressing differently are common. References to violence, or at least threats of violence, appear with regularity.
More recently, Trump asked the crowd at a rally to swear allegiance to him using the raised arm salute that is identifiable with 20th century fascism. Perhaps it's not so much of a surprise that Trump's demeanor has been compared to that of Benito Mussolini.
How can we explain the Trump phenomenon, characterized by extreme anger at outsiders, punitive calls for torture and expulsion, and in-group hatred of non-believers?
There may be the beginnings of an explanation for this kind of behavior, along with a better understanding of where it is heading. For an explanation, we refer below to the writings of Bob Altemeyer and to a recent article in Vox.com by Amanda Taub. In each case, the explanation for the Tea Party movement and the Trump movement is authoritarianism.
The article in Vox.com is making the rounds, going viral the way of kittens and flying toasters. But in this case, it is about a serious subject that needs to be recognized by the majority of the American people who find the Trump phenomenon perplexing.
Amanda Taub's March 1 article refers to recent studies on authoritarianism in the American population. Here is how Taub describes this phenomenon:
Authoritarians are thought to express much deeper fears than the rest of the electorate, to seek the imposition of order where they perceive dangerous change, and to desire a strong leader who will defeat those fears with force. They would thus seek a candidate who promised these things. And the extreme nature of authoritarians' fears, and of their desire to challenge threats with force, would lead them toward a candidate whose temperament was totally unlike anything we usually see in American politics — and whose policies went far beyond the acceptable norms.
A candidate like Donald Trump.
Taub refers to the work of psychologist Stanley Feldman, who looked at authoritarianism in terms of "a personality profile rather than just a political preference." He found that he could distinguish those with authoritarian tendencies by asking them questions about something as non-political as parenting styles, for example whether children should be obedient vs self-reliant. As Taub explains, "There was now a way to identify people who fit the authoritarian profile, by prizing order and conformity, for example, and desiring the imposition of these values."
I think we can imagine the difference by thinking about Trump's border fence. Many of us understand the concept and react to it either with indifference or mild sadness. Authoritarians stand up and cheer when the fence is mentioned, and feel angry towards those who oppose it.
People with authoritarian personalities are different, and there are a lot of them.
There's more to this article, which I suggest you read, but Taub and the editors of Vox.com give us a sobering message:
Trump embodies the classic authoritarian leadership style: simple, powerful, and punitive.
Perhaps the emphasis on the punitive explains why Trump and his followers so relish the ritual of throwing protestors out of his rallies.
Another analyst of authoritarianism
It's curious to me that the Vox.com article neglected the work of Bob Altemeyer, now retired as professor at the University of Manitoba, who studied and wrote about right wing authoritarianism for decades. You can download Altemeyer's book on the authoritarians (for free) from his web page. Altemeyer's book was published online back in 2006, before the advent of the Tea Party movement and before the election of Barack Obama. Altemeyer's subject matter overlaps Taub's piece, with the same focus on authoritarianism as a personality characteristic that leads to particular kinds of political behavior.
In 2010, Altemeyer did a followup to his earlier work in which he analyzed the Tea Party movement. It's this latter, shorter essay that I recommend for reading, as it summarizes a number of characteristics of the Tea Party participants, which Altemeyer viewed as being the same as the right wing authoritarians he had identified earlier. Here are a few of the observed characteristics of what he calls authoritarian followers:
Authoritarian submission: This type of person submits more readily to the ones viewed as being authorities, whether it be Rush Limbaugh or more recently, Donald Trump.
Fear: "Fear constantly pulses through authoritarian followers . . . "
Self righteousness, hostility, lack of critical thinking, and double standards.
Finally, compartmentalized thinking, which is the ability of the right wing authoritarian to believe things which are logically conflicting, and to do so without even realizing the contradictions.
There are more such characteristics, including the feeling of power that comes from being in groups (think of those Trump rally activities), and frighteningly, ethnocentrism. One poll of Trump voters in a southern primary showed that fully one-fifth of them felt that ending slavery was a mistake. Even leaving room for error in the form of answers offered in the attempt to be outrageous, this result is sobering.
Altemeyer published his Comment on the Tea Party Movement in April of 2010, but if you read through it carefully, you will find that it is eerily prescient about the Trump movement of 2016.
You might also consider Altemeyer's discussion of another kind of authoritarian, which he refers to as social dominators, who don't believe in equality. They are also represented in Republican elected officials.
In the longer term …
I suspect that most of us view Donald Trump as ultimately being too weak to become any kind of effective fascist, although the stylistic similarities are striking. Perhaps history will remember Trump as a false prophet of fascism rather than the real thing. We can hope. But as Taub, Altemeyer, and the people they quote are telling us, the authoritarian personality structure won't go away just because Donald Trump loses an election. They represent a significant fraction of today's Republican Party, and they will continue to have an effect. How the rest of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party will respond remains to be seen.
Addendum
It is not true that the international body charged with defining measurements such as the meter and liter is proposing a new measurement called the Trump, defined as the distance equal to 10 centimeters.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
